Oblivious ABA President blames law students for going to law school in a declining economy.

“It’s inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago.”

I don’t completely blame Kentucky lawyer Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III for recently uttering such manifest cluelessnes. He was basically saying shame on you for still falling for the mythology of the stratospherically paid legal profession.

A lawyer for almost 40 years, Robinson’s a product of his age, his times, and of his insular card-carrying high brow membership in a Big Law 450 attorney regional firm.

Still, he might as well be one of those annoying party-pooping scolds lecturing ‘young ‘uns‘ at the dinner table on how good they have it now compared to back in their day.

But in not entirely faulting Robinson for his callousness, that’s not to completely excuse the tactless insensitivity. From his mouth but not to God’s ears did spew forth 2012’s first breathtaking display of “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” — the arrogant indifference of “Let them eat brioche.”

It’s not unsurprising. The ABA is a macrocosm of the same attitudinal obliviousness afflicting most mandatory state bars. They don’t get it either.

For example, I recently learned the Arizona State Bar requires that its elected Governors obtain prior approval from the powerful Scope and Operations Committee if they want to put an item on the Board of Governors Meeting Agenda. Nothing can be brought to a vote before the Board without it first passing muster with this status-quo protecting, “don’t rock the boat” Committee made up of the State Bar President and other officers. Finally! There’s an explanation for the Arizona Bar being so reactionary.

But as for the ABA, it has a lot to answer for, not the least being its own self-serving institutional culture. They largely created the present mess, which was exacerbated by an unprecedented depressed legal market.

The ABA handed out candy-like law school accreditations as though there wasn’t a glut of lawyers; turned a blind eye to misleading law school post-graduation employment statistical tomfoolery; and managed an accreditation system that led directly to record-high tuitions exacted from hapless students to pay for tenured, highly paid and underworked law school faculty and complaisant administrators.

Law schools are now a university’s cash cow. But the only bovines getting ‘milked’ are the students.

As for the inquiries from Senators Boxer and Grassley about fudged post-graduation employment numbers, Robinson maintained it is an isolated problem involving just 4 law schools out of 200. And besides, he heedlessly claimed, “It hasn’t been a groundswell of comment from Congress.”

Last, I have to think that Robinson’s blundering bloviating won’t help increase ABA membership, even if the cost is nothing in the first year for new graduates. Hide-bound insensitivity and haughtiness aren’t good recruiting tools.

But at least Robinson was cautious enough not to suggest that complaining recent grads should “go to hell.” Another southern ‘good ole’ boy’ had something to say on that score. Bill Clinton famously admonished, “Never tell anyone to go to hell unless you can make ’em go.”

[…] Reacting negatively to Brian Tamanaha’s new book on failing law schools, O’Brien said, “Nobody feels good that tuitions have gone up. But the claim that a law degree is a bad investment doesn’t hold water.” How unsurprising — yet another oblivious ABA mouthpiece practicing compassion from a distance. […]